


37/78

by likethedirection



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Bunker Fic, Castiel in the Bunker, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, M/M, No particular timestamp, Pre-Slash, Remember that time Cas went shopping?, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 22:05:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5801980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethedirection/pseuds/likethedirection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the end of Dean's bed is a basket.  It doesn't seem cursed, so that's something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	37/78

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday fic for Dean! I haven't seen the most recent episode (I'm aware some big things have gone down), and generally this story ignores most of the shenanigans that have been happening this season in favor of bunker fluff. Ye be warned. :)

On the end of Dean’s bed was a basket.  In the basket was...he wasn’t totally sure how to categorize it, but it didn’t seem cursed, so that was something.

He sat down on the bed and poked around in the basket a little - no hex bags or anything underneath the single sheet of green tissue paper, crumpled and haphazard like someone had planned big things for that sheet and ultimately given up - then picked up the note resting on top of the little mountain of stuff.

The note said, _Pray now._

...Huh.

After a cursory check of the floor to make sure nothing nasty had gotten past the wards and doused his room in holy oil or something, he lifted an eyebrow and glanced heavenward.  (Pointless, since Cas was probably literally right down the hall, but habits die hard or whatever.)  Slowly, he tried, “Cas?”

A second, and footsteps came down the hall - called it, coming from only two rooms down - before Cas poked his head through the doorway.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Uh, hey.  Come on in.”  Cas did, reverence in his step like he was entering holy ground, and Dean nodded at his little care package.  “You know anything about this?”

Cas smiled a little.  “Yes.  It’s a present.”

Dean’s mouth closed.  Cas waited patiently, looking like a hopeful kitten.

“Uh,” Dean said.  “For what, not breaking the world today?”

“No,” Cas said.  “For your birthday.”

Dean blinked, then automatically glanced at the calendar, and...oh.  Huh.  Well, shit.

“...Oh.”  He looked at the basket again, then at Cas watching him expectantly, then connected the dots, his eyebrows lifting.  “This is from you?”

“I apologize if it’s strange.  I’ve never given you a birthday gift before.”  He glared at the green tissue paper like it had personally wronged him.  “It seemed like it was time.”

Birthday gift.  Birthday present from Cas.  “Wha--no.  Nah, it’s...thanks, man.”  Catching up with himself, he jerked his head vaguely.  “C’mon, quit hovering.”

Cas obediently sat down next to him and watched while Dean started pulling things out of the basket, one by one, taking inventory.

One package of beef jerky, the spicy kind he liked.  

One January 2016 issue of Busty Asian Beauties, New Year Mega Edition.  

One four-pack of toilet paper.

One bag of rice.

One six-pack of his favorite beer.  

One carton of eggs.  

One can of tomato soup.  

And, at the very bottom, a little circular pin.

Dean picked up the pin to examine it more closely, and huffed a laugh when he got a good look at the phrase, _My other car is the Batmobile._

“That was a last-minute addition,” Cas said, beaming.

“Dude.  This is a _lot_ ,” Dean said as he studied the back of the magazine, and he meant it - even if half of it was sort of a grocery list, hell, not like he wouldn’t use it - and Cas ducked his head.  “Where’d you come up with this stuff?”

Cas didn’t answer right away, and Dean set the magazine down to look at him.  He held on to the button, keeping it safe in his palm.  “Cas?”

Cas didn’t quite meet his gaze again, but wet his lips and drew breath.  “Before the angels fell, but after...everything else,” he said slowly, “I wanted to apologize.  For hurting you, for...all I’d done.  Words had proven ineffective, so I tried to find items that would make your life easier.  That would make you happy.  Or, at least, happier.”  Castiel lowered his eyes to his knees, his hands lying still on his thighs.  “I was on the way back when I was intercepted by Metatron, and...the rest, you know.  But everything escalated so quickly that I was never able to deliver my apology to you.  So.”  He nodded awkwardly at the basket.

Dean stared at him.  Castiel, Warrior of God, fidgeted.

After a beat, Castiel added gravely, “They’re not the same eggs.”

The laugh came out of nowhere, short and hearty, because holy _shit_.  When it was done, Castiel was watching him with tentative hope.  As if there was a snowball’s chance that Dean would reject this.

“Thanks,” he said, still smiling, and it was softer than he meant it, so he tried again.  Slung his arm around his friend for good measure.  “Thank you.  This is awesome.”

Castiel smiled back, just a warm little thing that reminded Dean of relief, of _We had an appointment_.  Slowly, one of his arms shifted and curled around Dean’s back, squeezed him a little.  “Happy birthday, Dean.”

“Thanks, Cas.”

They fell silent, and Dean didn’t move.  Right this second, it was okay.  There was only the room, and his bed covered in his favorite things, and his angel.  He was alive, and Sam was okay, and Cas was here, and he could shut out the rest.

It was his birthday, and he was okay.

Shaking his head a little, he murmured, “You know I actually forgot?  Probably couldn’t have told you the day of the week, forget that there was anything special about it.”

“You would have remembered in time,” Castiel said.  “Sam is currently in the kitchen attempting to follow a recipe.”

Dean huffed.  “Good thing the kitchen’s fireproof.”

“I had gotten the impression that birthdays are important.”

“Eh.  Kinda.”  With his free hand, Dean picked up the bag of rice, rolling it absently in his hand, sort of liking the sound it made.  “Dad tried, when we were kids.  Take us to a real restaurant where they’d sing a dumb song and give us free stuff, or take us to see something cool that wasn’t too far away from the hunt.  But every year it was a little less.  By the time I hit high school, his present was usually letting me crack open a beer with him, if we weren’t on a hunt.”  Castiel just watched him, and he shrugged.  “Sammy and I always tried to do something, though.  He was sweet, you know, always gave me homemade stuff, or something he remembered from some conversation we’d had like ten months ago.  But these last few years, I dunno.  The big bads kept getting bigger and badder, and I think we just ran out of energy to spend on stuff like that.”

“That’s too bad,” Castiel said, solemn.  “The day of your birth was a momentous one.  Deserving of celebration.”

Dean rolled his eyes.  “Yeah, bet Michael was ecstatic.”

“Not just because of that,” Castiel said.  “It was momentous because it was the day you began.”

Dean immediately dropped his eyes to the rice bag, _damn_ , wasn’t that an interesting rice bag, but Castiel kept going anyway.  “You were not, and then all at once, you _were_.  At last, the world could hear your voice.  Your mother and father held you in their arms and spoke love, a love that you brought into the world with you.  You awoke in them such joy, Dean.”

Dean dared to lift his eyes again, looking at Castiel sidelong.  “What, were you there, or something?”

Castiel smiled a little, halfway to apologetic but not quite there.  “You were my assignment, once.  When I research, I am very thorough.”

Dean stared.  “You watched my mom _give birth_ to me?”  Cas blinked neutrally back.  Dean took a second to shake that one off.  “Wow.  Here I thought this,” he gestured vaguely between Cas and himself, “couldn’t get any weirder.”

More quietly, Cas said, “Your mother didn’t want to sleep.  She couldn’t pull her eyes away from you.  She spent hours whispering promises to you of all that she would give you, singing to you.  Your father wept freely the first time he held you in his arms.  He vowed to you that no matter what kind of man you would become, he would always be proud of you.”

Anything Dean could possibly say got lodged up in his throat with everything else, and Cas held him a little tighter like he understood.

“Much has befallen you since that day,” he said, “but the first thing you brought to this world, before you had taken your first breath, was love.”  He ran his hand gently up and down Dean’s side, just once.  “That is significant.”

It was too close to home, way too close to too many things, and eight different dismissals tried to fight their way up through his stopped throat, and the only thing that made it out was a long exhale.  Instead of answering, he squeezed Cas against his side and pressed his face a little bit into Cas’s hair, and stayed.

Because Dean was ugly, and he was broken, and he’d forgotten how to make anything good a long time ago, but Cas could still sit here and say something like that.  Like Dean wasn’t ruined.  Like he’d been good all along.  Like he was still worth fighting for.

When Cas said it, Dean wanted to believe.

He gave himself a second more, absently noting the warmth from Cas’s palm and each one of his fingers against his side, then cleared his throat.  “So,” he said, mentally awarding himself a gold star when his voice came out steady, stirring Cas’s hair a little, “how old _am_ I, anyway?  What are we counting, here?”

When Cas answered, he sounded like he was smiling.  “Today, your body is thirty-seven years old.  Your soul, I believe, is approximately seventy-eight.”

Dean frowned.  “Eight?  I get an extra year somewhere?”

“An eventful one.  You don’t remember it, but Sam does.”

“Huh.  The big seven-eight.”  He pulled back enough to throw a smirk Cas’s way.  “Not too shabby for an old geezer, huh?”

Cas smiled indulgently at him.  “You are young, Dean,” he said softly.  “You are very young.”

Dean rolled his eyes.  “Yeah, yeah.”  A second, and he bumped Cas’s knee with his.  “You’re not half bad for an old geezer, either.”

“Thank you.”

Dean huffed a laugh and looked over his prizes.  “So, I get most of this stuff.  Booze, porn, jerky.  And, uh.”  He picked up the tomato soup and set it on the rice-bag resting between their laps, and just sort of patted it, because that meant a whole lot more, and he wasn’t gonna muck it up by trying to talk about it.  Cas nodded like he had, anyway.  “But what’s the toilet paper for, buddy?”

Cas took a second, probably filtering out some explanation of the human digestive system, and said, “There was a time, some years ago, when you had an encounter with Zachariah.  After, your dreams were dark for a long while.  Most of them were similar to what you described from the place he sent you, but a surprising number of them seemed to carry a theme of not having stockpiled enough toilet paper.”

“ _Dude_ ,” Dean said, trying to be pissed but busy not falling right off the damn bed, “what did we say about creeping on people’s dreams?”

“You were in distress,” Cas argued.  “They were causing you anxiety.  You never spoke of them, so I just assumed having enough toilet paper was something you often worry about.”

“...You’ve spent seven years thinking I had a TP complex.”

“In fairness, most humans in this part of the world seem to.”

“Wow.”

“If you don’t like it--”

“No!” Dean chuckled.  “Nah, it’s great.”  He picked up the package, looking it over.  “Damn, you got the good stuff, too.  Got the puppy on the front and everything.  Sammy always wanted Dad to get us the puppy one when we were kids, but Dad never went for it.  Said we’d be wiping our asses with it either way, so we always got the cheapo kind.  Kid’s gonna hit the ceiling.”  He squinted at the label.  “ _Aloe?_  Seriously?”

“And Vitamin E.  I had a very informative conversation with the woman behind the counter.  The off-brand apparently gave her a terrible rash.”

Pressing his lips together, Dean fought the laugh down and patted Cas’s shoulder.  “We’ve gotta get you some hobbies, buddy.”

Cas considered.  “Perhaps for my birthday.”

“Do you even know your birthday?”

“Yes and no,” Cas said.  “It predates the Gregorian calendar.  I know it, more or less, but I don’t believe human languages have adequate terms to explain it to you.”

“‘Course they don’t,” Dean said, rolling his eyes.  “So just pick one.  You’ve got a calendar now.  Go nuts.”

Cas went quiet and thoughtful for a second before murmuring, “September eighteenth.”

Dean’s eyebrows went up.  “That was quick.”

Cas nodded, more to himself than to Dean, and said, “It’s a good day.”

It only took a blink or two for Dean to catch up, the foggy memory of a calendar flashing behind his eyes.  A calendar in an empty gas station, the numbers swimming on the page, dehydration hissing in his throat, confusion gripping him about why and how his heart was beating.

Swallowing hard, he mumbled, “Good day to get in with the wrong crowd, huh?”

He kept his eyes firmly on the toilet paper label, on that stupid dog, but he still felt that serene smile that Cas pulled out sometimes, quiet and disarming.

"A good day to begin."

Aw, shit, Dean couldn't even laugh at that.  It meant too much.  After all they’d been through, eight years of following each other like shadows, losing and finding each other like two ends of a tether, riding each other out like storms, it meant...shit.  It meant everything.

He huffed a breath and started to meet Cas's gaze, but chickened out at the last second and moved his arm instead, slinging it around Cas's neck into a sort of headlock-hug and muttering something gruff and brainless in reply.

Cas smiled at the floor, and it dimly occurred to Dean that what he might have just said in his mini-panic was, _Yeah, yeah.  Love you too, buddy._

He was saved from having to figure out what the hell to do with that by a mildly alarmed Sam calling from the kitchen, "Cas?  Uh...a little help?  Maybe now?"

Dean took the opportunity to give Cas his head back, coughing and moving on.  "Ten bucks says he mixed up teaspoons and tablespoons again."

"He does seem to find the distinction particularly challenging," Cas mused, pushing himself to his feet.  "Though, to be fair, measurements are much more complicated now than they once were."

"No way.  It's my birthday.  I don't have to be fair," Dean declared, idly picking up the rice bag again, fiddling with it.  "But, uh, you know.  Thanks.  For all this."

"I'm glad to finally be able to give it to you."

"Yeah.  And hey, stick around 'til September, I might even get you back.  Fancy new coffee machine or eight more blue ties or something."  And that definitely sounded like a shady sort of bribery attempt, man, he was off today.  "I mean.  If you want to.  Stay that long, I mean.  Not like I'd skip your first birthday ever just because you don't want to--"

Cas's palm pressed to his cheek, and his lips pressed to Dean's forehead, shutting him right up.  Drawing back a little, Cas said with quiet certainty, "I want to."

Dean swallowed hard.  "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Cas lingered in Dean's space for a beat like it was his natural habitat, just long enough for Sam to call him again, pitched a little higher now in his _shit-shit-shit_ -voice, and he said in a rumble that Dean was pretty sure made his bones vibrate, "I need to rescue your brother."

"Ten bucks," Dean quietly reminded him, and the corner of Cas's mouth quirked up as he stood.  He made his way to the door, then paused.

"I enjoy board games," he said firmly, as though he'd been thinking on it for a good long while.  "Strategy games, in particular.  And dark roast coffee."  A thoughtful pause.  "Perhaps a mug to put it in."

"Hey," Dean snapped through a laugh, chucking the wad of tissue paper at him and secretly filing the ideas away.  "Ain't September yet, mooch.  Let me have a _day_ , here."

Staring him down, Cas deadpanned, "And a Grumpy Cat from the Hot Topical.  I worry that Claire's is beginning to feel isolated."

In lieu of the epic snort-laugh that tried to come out, Dean flipped him off.  Cas just smiled like the self-satisfied dick he was, then vanished toward the kitchen to help Sam out.

Left alone with his little treasure-trove of stuff, Dean started sorting, putting aside what would go in the kitchen, what went in the bathroom, what went in the hoarding-box, what went on his jacket pocket with careful pinning, and what went right in his face.  He was barely halfway through his first jerky stick when his phone dinged with a text message.  Still chewing, he picked up the phone and opened the message up.

 **_Cas:_ ** _The crisis was averted.  I believe it will still be perfectly edible._

Dean snorted and typed one back.

 **_You:_ ** _go team. ur getin too lazy, textin from inside the bunker_

 **_Cas:_ ** _The message was short and I'm helping Sam manage the setback. Oh, I forgot to send you a birthday text._

Dean managed to type, _dude u just saw me why would_ , before a second text came through and interrupted him.

 **_Cas:_ ** _Happy Birthday! ~ <|:-D _

Dean tilted his head sideways to study the emoticon, and just as he did so, another text helpfully popped up.

 **_Cas:_ ** _It's a party hat._

Jesus.  Dean freaking loved this dweeb.

 **_You:_ ** _mazeltov, ur dorkiness just leveled up. but thanks i guess_

There was no reply, and shit, Dean hoped he hadn't hurt his feelings or something.  Somewhere along the line, in the world of Dean, that had become a really freaking unacceptable thing to do.  He’d done it one too many times, and he’d finally taken away his own privilege.

Before he could get in his own way, he started typing again.

 **_You:_ ** _hey_

 **_You:_ ** _glad you're here._

Nothing for a stupidly long few seconds that made him itch, and his phone dinged again.

 **_Cas:_ ** _So am I._

Then, a second later,

 **_Cas:_ ** _ <3 _

Dean rolled his eyes, but thumbed the pin on his jacket and couldn't find it in him to summon any bullshit for this one.

It was his birthday, and he was okay.

 **_You:_ ** _dork_

  
  


**_You:_ ** _ <3 _


End file.
